Sailthru Inks $19M

Sailthru, a New York-based company focused on digital branding and communication, has raised $19 million in Series B financing. Benchmark led the round. RRE, DFJ Gotham, and AOL Ventures also participated. As a result, Benchmark’s Bill Gurley has joined Sailthru’s board. Sailthru raised $9 million in previous rounds of funding.

PRESS RELEASESailthru, a technology company specializing in digital brand experiences and communications, has announced a $19 million Series B investment led by Benchmark. Sailthru will use the investment to accelerate the growth of the company by increasing both staff and infrastructure and expanding the use of Smart Data™ by Fortune 500 companies. Sailthru joins Benchmark’s portfolio that currently includes other industry-leading companies such as Dropbox, Twitter, Instagram, Uber, Quora, Yelp and Zillow.

Sailthru’s Smart Data is leading a major shift in how companies engage with their customers through the automatic analysis of big data sets to generate informed, personalized communications across all digital channels. Unlike Big Data, which merely exists in a passive state and can often be overwhelming, Smart Data powers decisions. Sailthru’s Smart Data allows businesses to understand, predict, and engage each consumer on an individual level in real time. Sailthru’s clients are improving their ROI, customer time on-site and are seeing strong increases to customer lifetime value from their adoption of Smart Data.

Benchmark’s investment allows Sailthru to meet the expanding demand for its products and services by continuing to staff up and maintain the momentum of product development. In the last year, Sailthru increased revenue by 270% with an average monthly growth rate of over 9%. Sailthru now supports clients in five continents, recently opened a West Coast office in San Francisco and is expanding into Europe in Q2 of this year.

“This investment from Benchmark allows us to make a huge strategic play by focusing the core of our business model on Smart Data. We are using this investment to strengthen our world-class teams across the board, from product development to account management and marketing, allowing our team to devote the proper resources to scale our business and create stronger partnerships with our existing clients,” said Neil Capel, CEO & Founder of Sailthru. “It’s a very exciting time for us at Sailthru as our company continues to succeed by helping our clients grow their businesses by creating more meaningful, relevant experiences for individual consumers through Smart Data.”

Bill Gurley, General Partner at Benchmark said, “As all digital businesses evolve to the next level, the best companies are focused on how they can deliver an individualized experience for each and every customer. Sailthru is a company that exemplifies this by placing the individual at its core to enable companies to adopt a personalized approach to serve their customers. Companies that embrace this approach see much higher conversion rates, and as a result higher revenues and more satisfied customers. It’s a powerful combination.”

This financing round was led by Benchmark and supported by other leading investors and venture capital firms including RRE, DFJ Gotham, and AOL Ventures. As a result, Benchmark’s Bill Gurley has joined Sailthru’s board of directors. Sailthru has raised $9 million in previous rounds of funding including $1 million seed funding in 2010 and $8 million Series A funding in 2011.

In an effort to share knowledge and bring like-minded tech innovators together, Sailthru will be kicking off a Smart Data thought leadership series at the end of February and hosting a Smart Data conference in early June, both events to be held in New York. If you are interested in attending please email [email protected] for more information.

About Sailthru

Sailthru is a technology company that specializes in digital brand experiences and communications. Its Smart Data™ is leading a major shift in how companies engage with their customers through the automatic analysis of big data sets to generate informed, personalized communications across all digital channels. Smart Data delivers higher conversion rates and revenues for clients that include AOL/Huffington Post, The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company, Business Insider, The New York Post, Thrillist, Fab.com, Totsy and OpenSky.

Founded in 2008 by Neil Capel and Ian White and headquartered in New York, Sailthru has been recognized for its industry-leading practices promoting consumer privacy & security by the Online Trade Association (OTA) and is on their 2012 Honor Roll. For more information, please visit www.sailthru.com

About Benchmark

Benchmark believes that great entrepreneurs change the world for the better. The venture capital firm focuses on early-stage companies in the areas of mobile, social and cloud computing. Benchmark is comprised of six equal general partners who take a hands-on approach to every business decision. Benchmark’s portfolio includes companies like Twitter, Dropbox, Asana, and Uber; recent exits such as Bytemobile, Gaikai, Demandforce, Instagram, OpenTable, Yelp, and Zillow; and market leaders like eBay, Juniper Networks, MySQL, and Red Hat. Benchmark has offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, CA.